Pinnacle Event (19 page)

The two Hong Kong officers looked at each other in a way that said they were used to being told bizarre stories that were unfortunately true. “Do you know where they are now?” Commissioner Cheung asked.

“I know where their mobile phones are. All at the Upper House, the five-star hotel owned by Robert Coetzee, one of the new Trustees. They are waiting for the last Trustee to arrive and she gets in late tonight. Their meeting is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

The Assistant Commissioner laughed, “You just want us to get into Mr. Coetzee's hotel tonight and bug the conference room he plans to hold his secret meeting in tomorrow morning. Is that all?”

“Yes, and we need to get a man into the hotel's server and telco room,” Bowman replied. “And you always have two off-duty officers working security at the hotel at night. Naturally, we will pay them for their cooperation.”

“Naturally, you will not,” Cheung shot back. “This is not Shanghai. We are a clean police force. No bribes. They will help you because I will order them to help you.”

“Thank you, Commissioner,” Ray said.

“You want them all under physical surveillance when they leave the hotel?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, if possible. Three men, two women. But we have a few of our own people who have been picking them up at the airport and following them to the hotel.”

“CIA men stand out in Hong Kong,” Taylor observed.

“But the people they hire do not. And six South Africans flew in to help.”

“Blacks will stand out even more,” Cheung laughed.

“Yes, sir, but they are not black, although they work for a black woman. I think you might like to meet her and I know she would like to meet you. She is the Director of their Special Security Services. Right now she is running a little ops room we have set up.”

“At the American Consulate?” Taylor asked.

“Ah, no,” Bowman admitted. “We are using a company in a high-rise in Central.”

“We will pretend we don't know that,” Commissioner Cheung said. “Now Richard will help you get all of this in place and will get you some bodyguards, while I go home to see the grandchildren before they go to bed.”

“Bodyguards?” Ray protested.

“Mr. Bowman, you just told us they have tried to kill you in two countries. Third time may be the charm. They, these unknown bad guys, must be here, too, and they may eventually kill you, but they will not do so in my city. I like to keep my murder statistics low.” With that, Cheung left the two men to their nightwork.

 

25

MONDAY, OCTOBER 31

FORTY-SIXTH FLOOR

PACIFIC TRUST TOWER

CENTRAL, HONG KONG

“There is a great view of Kowloon across the bay,” Mbali said, “or at least there was before they put up the blackout curtains. Welcome to our upscale offices.”

“CIA spares no expense when it comes to their own real estate needs. They'll say it adds credibility to their cover, whatever that is,” Ray replied as he walked into the conference room filed with computer monitors, television screens, headsets, and other electronics.

“We're a hedge fund, Emerging Opportunities,” a man with Mbali explained. “Peter Mason, Base Chief Hong Kong.” He looked like he might have been an Assistant Professor of Economics, in a blazer, bow tie, and horn-rimmed glasses. “They've finished the small talk over breakfast and are convening in the hotel conference room on fifty-two. The audio and video feeds are working well from the room and we are running the audio from their cell phones as backup. All set.”

“I wish we were closer, in case anything goes wrong,” Mbali said to Ray. “Pacific Place, where the hotel is, even though it looks near, would take us almost half an hour in this traffic.”

“We're fine. You have two guys in the hotel and two guys outside. Peter, here, has twice that number. And Hong Kong Police have undercovers everywhere, including doing counter surveillance to see if anybody else is here.”

“You mean besides Danny Avidar's team,” she said.

“I told the Commissioner they were ours. No need to complicate things. Where are they?” Ray asked.

“In the next room,” the CIA Base Chief answered for her.

“A nice young couple. They live here full time. He actually does work at a hedge fund, when he's not doing errands for Mossad. They are getting the same audio feed we are, but they have some special link back to Tel Aviv so they wanted their own space.”

“So we have Israeli, South African, American, and Hong Kong agents all set up on this meeting. I am sure no one will ever notice,” Ray deadpanned.

They could see the meeting beginning. Five people arranging themselves around a round table, placing their coffee mugs and teacups next to their papers. “Amazing that Coetzee is using a room with videoconferencing,” Mbali noted.

“All of his conference rooms have videoconferencing,” the Base Chief observed. “He just thinks the camera is off. He unplugged it. We swapped it out for a look-alike with a battery pack and a wireless feed.”

Robert Coetzee began. He was still a large man, even though he was in his late seventies, with a pink head of thinning white hair. “We meet as the Trustees of a charitable foundation, created to care for the needs of those who became exiles after the fall of the government of South Africa. We are fiduciaries of that fund. Yes, we are compensated for managing the fund's investments, but fundamentally we are the leaders of a global fund that is housed in several different countries. We each manage a portion of the money individually, but we decide together how the funds are spent.”

Coetzee continued. “As you know, the tradition among our predecessors was that there was no chairman. The meetings rotated among the five cities and the host always played the role of informal chair. So, it falls to me under these sad circumstances to welcome us all as new members of the Trustees, to our first meeting. Rachel, I am glad that you asked for this session. I am sure that we need it. Before we hear from Rachel, however, maybe we could each introduce ourselves and say a little about what we do, who we are. Paul Wyk, will you start? You are the youngest.”

Wyk looked even younger than the twenty-nine years that he was. Tall and thin, with the wiry look of a tennis star, he was in fact an investment banker. “I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I replace Willem Merwe of Sydney, who replaced his father before him. My late father was the head of Army Research and Development in South Africa. He resettled in New Zealand when I was little. I have no real memories of Africa. The books I have taken over from Merwe show that we have slightly over 1.8b U.S. dollars under management from the Sydney office, some of it newly arrived. I can go into the details of how it's invested when we get to that part of the meeting.”

“Hesitant, very matter of fact,” Mbali observed to Ray Bowman in their observation post a half mile away.

“Like he's not sure what it's all about,” Ray added.

“Liz Pleiss, from Toronto. I replace my father, Marius, who lived, and, ah, died in Dubai.” She looked to be in her early forties, dressed in a gray business suit. She looked like she felt at home in a boardroom. “I have been a management consultant, specializing in making mergers work, but now I think I may have to leave that work to do full time on these investments. I have an MBA from the Sloan School, but investing is not my expertise. My father's data show a book value of 1.3b U.S. dollars, although much of the original 800 million dollars is tied up in real estate.”

“Notice that she didn't mention what her father did in South Africa. Didn't mention South Africa at all,” Mbali said.

“What did her dad do back then?” Peter Mason, or whatever the CIA man's name was, asked.

“He was the CFO of ARMSCOR, their big defense industry,” Ray Bowman replied.

“I am Rachel Steyn, a mother of two girls. I worked at Google in Israel. I managed databases and had a small R-and-D team on new projects in data storage. I served in the Israeli Army before that. My late husband, Dawid, who was murdered, was the investor. He had 2.1 billion dollars in the accounts. His father made nuclear bombs in South Africa, but I will wait to talk about that.”

“Nicely done,” Bowman observed. Mbali nodded, pleased.

“Johann Potgeiter, Vienna. My father also worked on the nuclears, lately for the UN. I had been working with him on the assets for some time. We have 3.1 billion U.S. dollars under management, much of it in real estate.”

“Short and sweet,” Mbali said.

“From a man who told me he was not a Trustee,” Ray added.

“Well, back to me,” Robert Coetzee began. “I was a South African Special Forces officer. My brother was in intelligence. He was the Trustee. With the new money, we have almost three billion dollars in book value, which, if I have done my sums, gives us collectively slightly over ten billion dollars U.S. in assets under management. We are going to have to discuss at some point what we do with it all, because it must kick off far more than we need to pay for the widows and orphans. But, first, Rachel, you wanted to discuss the, ah, recent events.”

“My husband was murdered,” she began. “Your father was, too, Elizabeth, as was yours Johann. And your brother, Robert. And Willem Merwe.”

“Well, Rachel, we can't be sure of that yet. The police think that the deaths in Dubai, Sydney, and Vienna may have been accidents,” Johann Potgeiter replied. “Although I admit it would be an extraordinary series of coincidences.”

“They were not coincidences, Johann,” Coetzee said. “That is why I am willing to provide for all of your protection at home in your countries using the global security company we own. All former Special Forces and Special Branch types from several countries. Very good. Very solid.”

Rachel resumed. “They were all murdered shortly after they received large deposits of half a billion dollars each. They were killed by the men who paid them that money, who paid them for something.”

“What? I don't understand,” said Wyk. “Why pay and then kill them. Why not the other way round? What did they sell them?”

“Nuclear bombs,” Rachel said.

No one replied, for a moment.

“How do we know that?” Robert Coetzee asked.

“Mossad. They told me. They have proof,” Rachel said confidently. “Proof that the original Trustees took with them when they left South Africa not only cash, diamonds, and gold, but also six nuclear missile warheads. There are five left. One they tested secretly to prove they work still. Then they sold the five.”

“That's incredible,” Wyk said.

“No, I think it could be true,” Robert Coetzee interjected. “Cornelius always told me there was a secret program that he could not read me into. He also told me before he died that they had made what he called a Deacquistion Decision that would result in a great deal of additional cash. They sold something to somebody.”

“But, as Paul asked, then why would the buyers kill them? Maybe it was someone else who killed them because they sold whatever it was they sold?” Liz Pleiss thought out loud.

“They killed them to cover their tracks. Now no one knows who bought the bombs,” Rachel said looking around the table. “Unless one of us does.”

Johann Potgeiter squirmed in his seat. “It is possible,” he said. “My father and I used to have long discussions about his work at the IAEA, over schnapps, after my wife and the children would retire.” He seemed reluctant to go on, but then added, “I remember him asking me whether the best way to deal with Iran's nuclear program would not be to give the Saudis nuclear weapons.”

“That's crazy,” Paul Wyk said.

“Maybe, but if Iran has the bomb, they can intimidate everyone in the region. Unless another equal power also has the bomb. Just like India's program balances Pakistan's. Like America's balances Russia's and China's. I think he wanted Saudi Arabia to have the bomb. He believed the answer to nuclear proliferation was balance.”

“Lovely,” Rachel observed.

“Well, you already have nukes in Israel,” Johann replied.

“Balance could mean someone else,” Robert Coetzee interjected. “It could mean South Korea getting some to counter what the North has made.”

“Or it could be al Qaeda,” Rachel noted.

“My brother would not have done that,” Coetzee shot back. “Never. If he did this, he must have thought the buyer was a responsible party.”

“Responsible for killing him,” Liz Pleiss added. “So, let me get this straight, we are all accepting the fact that we have about 2.5 billion dollars in dirty money, money made from selling nuclear bombs? That makes us all criminals, even if we didn't know, they could arrest us, or at least seize the assets, or both. This explains why they raided my office yesterday. I heard about it just after I landed here.”

“Who?” Johann Potgeiter asked. “Who raided your office?”

“Apparently the RCMP, the Canadian police.” Liz Pleiss replied. “They took all my files, according to my secretary.”

“The Shin Beth took mine,” Rachel answered.

“God, the Mounties going through everything. That's all I need with my taxes as they are,” Liz said.

“Taxes? Is that all you are worrying about, your taxes,” Paul Wyk asked. “Don't you get it? Somebody is getting ready to blow up bombs. Nuclear bombs that we, our organization sold them. Shit. We need to turn ourselves in.”

“To who?” Robert Coetzee asked.

“The UN, I don't know,” Wyk stammered.

“No, it's not that we sold them,” Liz Pleiss insisted. “We did nothing wrong. We knew nothing about this. We just inherited the money as fiduciaries of a charity for South African exiles. No, we did not sell bombs. We did nothing.”

“Who could arrest us?” Wyk asked.

“The Americans certainly,” Liz Pleiss answered. “They have all sorts of laws related to anything they think is national security. Christ, we are going to need some good lawyers.”